Renovation Sequence Checklist

The idea behind it

Each stage of a room produces a piece of information the next stage's order depends on. Strip-out tells you what the subfloor is. Drywall tells you whether the wall gets texture, which changes paint coverage by up to 30%. Flooring sets the finished floor height, which is where the baseboard sits.

Buy ahead of that information and you are guessing. That is why the sheet has a then order column next to every stage rather than one long shopping list at the top.

The eight stages

1. Measure everything — before demolition, while the room still exists.
2. Strip out — and find out what the subfloor is and whether the walls are sound.
3. Inside the walls — electrical, plumbing, insulation. Once it is closed, opening it again is a different project.
4. Close the walls — drywall, tape, three coats, sanding.
5. Prime and first coat — before the floor goes down, so you can be careless at the bottom of the wall.
6. Flooring — over a clean, dry, level substrate.
7. Trim — after the flooring, because the floor height decides where it sits.
8. Caulk, fill, final coat — the stage that makes it look professionally done.

The two people get backwards

Paint before flooring. It feels wrong — you are painting a room you will then work in — but it is much faster, because you can be careless at the bottom of the wall with no floor to protect. You come back at the end for one tidy finish coat against the new baseboard.

Trim after flooring. Fit the baseboard first and the new floor arrives at a different height, leaving a gap you have to hide with quarter round you never wanted.

The notes box

There are ruled lines at the bottom headed what you found behind the wall, and they are there because you will find something. A pipe where the plan said a stud, old knob-and-tube, water damage nobody mentioned. Writing it down as you go is how the next person who opens that wall — quite possibly you — finds out about it.